Writing Your Way: Creating a Personal Journal

Writing Your Way illuminates what writing is about, how we can begin and the many reasons why we should create our own personal journals.Keeping a journal is often the first step many of us take when we want to write. In Writing Your Way, poet, writer and therapist Ellen Jaffe weaves the wisdom and works of poets, storytellers, fiction and non-fiction authors into a thoughtful narrative about journalling. As well, guided exercises offer inspiration and insight as we test the waters of our own creativity. The book moves through the four directions of the wind. East explores new beginnings, creativity and origin; North, spirit, wisdom and teaching; South, playfulness and passion; and West, emotions and inner truth. Jaffe understands that writing serves many purposes - it can help us explore painful issues and recover from traumatic events, develop our self-confidence and self-esteem, consider our future and reflect on our past. Writing Your Way combines technique and self-exploration to help us discover our personal style of writing.

Ellen S. Jaffe's previous books include two collections of poetry, a stage play adaptation of Margaret Laurence's Jason's Quest, and Writing Your Way: Creating a Personal Journal, published in 2001 by Sumach Press. Jaffe brings insight from her background in child psychotherapy to Feast of Lights, her first novel for young adults. Visit her website at: www.ellen-s-jaffe.com